Recent Updates on Novel Carrier Systems for the Delivery of Herbal Bioactives with Poor Bioavailability and their Clinical Trial Status

Abstract

Abstract: Herbal medicine and its active phytochemicals have been used since ancient times to cure, mitigate, and treat various health issues, such as inflammation, wounds, fever, cough, cold, diabetes, viral diseases, cancers, etc. Different databases, such as Scopus, Google Scholar, Pubmed, Pubchem, and ScienceDirect, were searched exhaustively to find potent herbal leads and their novel carrier systems. Literature was collected from these databases for the last twenty years. Various research articles, review articles, books, and patents were referred for screening of the herbal bioactives. In the recent past, herbal medicine-derived bioactives like curcumin, paclitaxel, catechin, betulinic acid, ferulic acid, gallic acid, rutin, quercetin, resveratrol, glycyrrhizin, silybin, berberine and many more have been reported for several pharmacological activities, including anticancer, antidiabetic, hepatoprotective, antioxidant, antiinflammatory, antipyretic, antimicrobial, etc. However, they have limitations like low aqueous solubility and poor bioavailability, which restrict their therapeutic efficacy and clinical use. In this context, Novel Carrier Systems (NCSs) are promising to overcome the problems of herbal bioactives. NCSs, such as liposomes, nanoparticles, nanocapsules, solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carriers, dendrimers, nanoemulsions, phytosomes, transfersomes, ethosomes, etc., have been utilized to encapsulate the bioactives and drugs to enhance their solubility, permeability, elimination half-life, bioavailability, pharmacokinetics, and therapeutic efficacy. Moreover, they protect the drugs/herbal bioactive from the gastric environment and minimize the dose-associated toxicity. Recent advances in the various approaches, including new methodology, analytical techniques, delivery mechanism, materials, loading capacity, encapsulation efficiency, and in vitro and in vivo models, were considered in the compilation of this review article. It was found that NCSs are pioneering in drug delivery and targeting. The present study highlights the importance of herbal bioactives, advanced NCSs, patents, and their clinical trial status.